I've moved!

Howdy all! Just a heads up - this blog has moved. Check out recent work and random stuff here. So long, Blogger, and thanks for all the fish!

I Am Iron Motoko

Should have some puppet-y goodness for you in the coming weeks. For the moment, though, you'll have to make do with some more tutorial fun -

Here's a still from a test I'm working on. I've got all the futuristic gadgets up and animating in After Effects but wanted to take it a step further by rotoscoping over the live footage you get with the download, replacing the (rather rotund) actor with a more appealing Major.

I rotoscoped the 5 second clip in Flash and after some tests in Photoshop and Illustrator, decided it would be smarter to clean and color it in Flash as well.

I'll post the final if I ever actually manage to finish it.

I'm Only Dancin'

Made this fellow yesterday - he kinda reminds me of my friend Adam from college with the headphones and all.

Next up, some cool dance moves.

Papercut

Yesterday Photoshop, today After Effects...

Well, technically I started this Tuesday but here's how it's shaping up. Learning a bit about expressions and playing around with the Puppet Tool for the first time (I know!). More to come...

Photoshop Phun

I rarely play around in Photoshop.

So, when I do and the results are somewhat decent, I like to brag about it. Plus who doesn't like Giant Squid?

Old Time Felting

Last night - err, last week - okay, fine - Last month, I dropped by a cozy little gallery by the name of Hanahou for a show with the rather weighty name Four-Ring Needle Felting Extravaganza.

The show featured the work of four artists who focus on the intense but seemingly therapeutic art of felting. Specifically, the work of Hine Mizushima who I 'collaborated' (and I use that term loosely) with on a TMBGs' music video. Basically, she made the music video for the re-booted version of "Why Does the Sun Shine?" and I dropped scenes from it in to the music video Dave Cowles and I made for the updated "Why Does the Sun Really Shine?".

Despite 'working with' Hine and being Facebook 'friends', we've never actually met before so I knew I needed to walk the block from work to check it out, give her a hug and snap some pictures.

Hine with squid!

Close-up of creatures over her shoulder -

Her Ectoplasm series -

And some fancy jellyfish! And while I'm slightly biased in my estimate of Hine's Unnatural History work being the best, the other artists, particularly Yoko Nomura's Fractured Fairy Tales -

And Moxie's Icons & Totems & Pieces of the Past were equally charming and photogenic (this is the company camera, which I might need to borrow more often)!

I particularly love needle-felting as a technique and would LOVE to employ it making puppets for a stop-motion video some day. In fact, I've toyed with the idea of a re-telling of the Owl & the Pussycat set to Jim Stafford's Spiders & Snakes using just that...

There are planets you don't know...

The company I work at full-time is gearing to move in to a new space uptown (W. 19th, not that uptown). The result is a slight drag in workload.
Fortunately, I can log hours under 'Learning' and whip up some neat looking effects with the help of hundreds of online tutorials - really, the only trouble is deciding which one is worth tackling.

For one of my first outings, how about some science!

It's mostly solid layers with fractal noise and some expressions, paired up with a lot of adjustment layers and the mind-blowing CC Sphere Effect. Seriously. My jaw literally dropped.